How do local councils introduce performance improvement ideas whilst keeping costs down?

What is it about?

This article shows how English and Welsh councils introduced ideas of performance management and performance improvement into strategy and decision-making without creating substantial internal conflict with those who wanted to limit spending. Following on from a survey of local government managers, it draws largely on interviews with finance managers in a cross-section of authorities across England and Wales.

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Why is it important?

Previous studies of how organisations have tried to accommodate new principles and 'institutional logics' that conflict with existing practices have argued that the advocates of these different perspectives compete for supremacy on a 'battlefield'. We argue that this process of 'hybridization' is less likely to be competitive in public bodies and organisations that have prevailing working cultures of cooperation, such as local government.